The Spy by Sophie Lark

23

Ivan Petrov

Present Day

Ipush up from the floor of my cell, the grit of the bare rock digging into my palms. Those palms are harder than iron by now. They’ve endured one thousand push-ups per day for three and a half long years.

When I want to do pull-ups, I flip my bed on its end and use the steel crossbar of the headboard.

One thousand push-ups. Five hundred pull-ups. One thousand air squats. Five hundred sit-ups. Broken into intervals like the hours of an invisible clock. That is how I divide my day.

The rest of the time, I read.

Marko provides me with books because he doesn’t want me to go mad.

Then I wouldn’t be able to provide the monthly check-ins that keep the ransom money flowing. Also, it would spoil his fun.

He’s due for a visit any day now. I keep track of how many days have passed, scoring the stone walls with an old nail. Marko’s visits aren’t regular enough to predict accurately. He does that intentionally. Routine is dangerous, he knows that.

I always knew he was intelligent.

It was the qualities I failed to see that came back to bite me.

I hear Borys and Ihor rotating positions out in the corridor. Borys shined his boots this morning—a sure sign that Marko is indeed about to visit. I know the Malina’s routines better than they do, though my cell has no windows, and only a small slit in the door through which my meals pass.

I haven’t seen the sky or felt wind on my face since I came to this place.

But I would pass the rest of my days in darkness if I could see my wife one last time.

I’ve been torn in half. The other part of me is wandering, searching . . . longing for me as I’m longing for her.

I know she’s looking for me. I know it as well as I know my own thoughts.

Sloane will never give up on me.

And I will never stop trying to come home to her.

I made a promise to her. And I always keep my promises.

I miss my children almost as badly. My only comfort is that they have their mother with them and Dominik to help protect them.

It’s Sloane I worry about. She’ll drive herself to death looking for me. She’ll take any risk. I worry about her survival more than my own.

I can’t bear being locked up in here when she might need me out there.

I’ve never met anyone more capable than my wife. But no one is invincible, no matter what she and I might have believed about ourselves in the hubris of youth. She needs me, and I need her.

We draw life from each other. In the time we’ve been apart, we’ve both been slowly dying.

I listen for the sounds of Marko’s approach.

I’m buried deep in the earth, in a vast stone tomb, like a pharaoh interred before his time.

I don’t know if I’m in a castle or prison, or even in which country we reside. I was shot four times by the Malina, covering my wife and children so they could escape. I woke in this cell, with tubes running in and out of me, with IV bags and monitors, and a doctor called Lyaksandro who tended to me while always ensuring that I was shackled hand and foot to the cot.

The Malina are careful with their most valuable prisoner.

After all, I’m worth $6 million a month, not to mention the priceless satisfaction I provide to Marko Moroz.

He’s bleeding my family dry, raking in over $252 million so far. Still, I think he would trade every penny for the pleasure of rubbing his revenge in my face.

That’s why he comes for these monthly ransom calls. So he can witness my pain.

I know when his convoy arrives, because I hear the crackle of the radio out in the hallway, and the shifting sound as Borys stands at attention. I don’t know if Marko comes by boat, helicopter, or car. I don’t know if we’re on an island or in the middle of the wilderness.

But I do pick up clues—small, significant clues. And I pass them along in the only way I can.

I’m sitting on my cot, back against the wall, reading The Devil In The White City for the third time.

I hear the clanking of electronic locks and the groan of heavy doors creaking open. Then the tramping tread of Marko and his men approaching.

“Dobroho ranku, ser,” Borys greets him with an audible salute. Good morning, sir.

I already knew some Ukrainian, similar as it is to Russian. Now I know more from listening to Borys and Ihor shoot the shit outside my cell. I know far more than I ever cared to learn about Borys’ rotten luck with the ponies, and Ihor’s persistent foot rash.

Marko’s men are not permitted to marry or even maintain long-term relationships. They have no children, and he deliberately recruits those without close family. He is a jealous god who tolerates no other loyalties.

It does create a cult-like bond between him and his men. They depend on him entirely. But they also squabble bitterly amongst themselves, vying for his approval in petty, backstabbing ways.

Marko thrives on this. He loves to pit them against each other, doling out compliments and mockery in arbitrary and capricious ways.

I can feel Marko’s bulk standing outside the door to my cell. I hear the grit of gravel as he leans forward, pressing his eye against the retinal scanner.

Only Marko and his lieutenant Kuzmo can enter my cell. Marko doesn’t trust his other soldiers, not with his favorite prisoner. They might be vulnerable to threats or bribes.

The door swings open, Marko’s vast bulk filling the frame.

I mark my place in the book before setting it down next to me.

“Another call already?” I say. “How time flies.”

It never flies. I count every second, every minute, every hour.

But this is part of the game Marko and I play, where I refuse to let him see the overwhelming hatred that wells up inside of me at the sight of his face. He wants me to rage and howl and beg.

I will never fucking do it.

Marko steps into the cell, looking around as if he’s never seen it before.

It’s a plain space, blank walls, stone floor. A capsule carved out of the rock, windowless and lit by a single electric panel set in the ceiling. The only furniture is the metal-framed bed and a single folding chair, currently collapsed and leaning up against the wall. My books sit in a stack on the floor.

“Are you done with those?” Marko says, nodding toward the tower of books.

“Yes,” I say.

He snaps his fingers, ordering one of his soldiers to exchange the books for a new supply.

My own personal library.

“Any requests for the next month?” Marko says, unsuccessfully trying to hide his smile.

“Yes. Wolf Hall,” I say.

“I thought you didn’t care for fictionalized biographies.”

“A man can always learn to appreciate something new.”

“I brought this one for you,” Marko says, tossing a paperback down on the bed.

The Count of Monte Cristo.

His teeth glint as he grins.

This is a tired joke: he already brought Little Dorrit, Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redemption, The Man in the Iron Mask, and The Green Mile.

“Really, Marko,” I say quietly. “I almost think you’re trying to give me ideas.”

“I think you come up with plenty of ideas on your own,” Marko growls, giving one last glance around my empty cell.

I’ve never tried to escape—that he knows of. I’m sure that only makes him more paranoid. He knows me too well to believe that I’m patiently biding my time.

“Chair,” Marko barks at his lieutenant.

Kuzmo lifts the chair from the wall and sets it in the center of the room. I take my place upon it, crossing my arms behind my back so Kuzmo can handcuff them behind me.

These security measures are, perhaps, overblown—after all, Marko has four soldiers with him and two more out in the hall. I’m alone and unarmed.

On the other hand, he knows me well.

I’m sure he tells himself the handcuffs are to humiliate me further. The stare that passes between us tells another story.

“Are you looking forward to going home, my friend?” Marko says, his eyes fixed on mine, his pupils dark and dilated in the dim space. ”Excited to see your wife again? How lucky that she still lives for you to see her.”

I don’t like when he mentions Sloane. It takes effort for me to hide my anger.

It’s nothing but effort, controlling the almost irresistible impulse to snap the chain on these cuffs and tear his throat out with my fingers.

If I had no wife and no children, I would do it. I’d rather die riddled with bullets from his soldier’s guns than suffer another minute of his taunts or another month in this sunless torture chamber.

Imprisonment is torture, make no mistake about it. Marko may not burn my flesh or break my bones, but he is making deep cuts to my soul, every day that passes. He is trying to twist and break me on the rack of boredom, rage, and loneliness.

“Yes,” I say quietly. “I look forward to going home.”

Marko is too clever to ever let an enemy as dangerous as me free in the world to seek my revenge. He will never let me go.

My family pays the ransom to buy time, not because they believe him.

His amusement draws out the game.

We play into his enjoyment to drag it on. But eventually he will reach the end of his diversion. When that happens, either he will die, or me.

He’s too angry that I have Sloane while Daryah is dead.

In his fury, he has decided that I took his wife from him, not Taras Holodryga.

Taras is a ghost. He’s no fitting target for Marko’s anger—he can’t be punished anymore.

I’m the one alive. The only person left to rage upon.

That’s why he comes here every month, to drive the knife in deeper. To satiate himself on the sight of me: filthy, pale, and trapped in here like an animal in a cage.

He takes a sick satisfaction in my phone call to my family.

He listens in every time, wanting to hear the desperation in their voices, and the bitterness in mine.

He’s never caught what I actually say to them.

“Bring the phone,” he says to Kuzmo.

Kuzmo is the only person Marko trusts, at least to some degree. Kuzmo is tall and well-built—Marko wouldn’t respect anyone who wasn’t. He has a stern, unsmiling face, a narrow, lipless mouth, and the same close-shaved haircut imposed upon him during his days in Stark prison. The dark stubble on his cheeks and scalp has a bluish tinge, repeated in the steel blue of his eyes. His military clothing has an old-fashioned look, like the Black Brunswickers. On the wool sleeve of his jacket, I see a single perfect crystalline flake, not yet melted.

Kuzmo rarely speaks, except to bark orders at his subordinates on Marko’s behalf. He certainly doesn’t engage in any of Borys or Ihor’s idle chatter.

He brings the cellphone to me, already dialing my brother Dominik’s number.

Dom answers at once, expecting the call.

“Ivan,” he says.

“Still here,” I reply. “Still alive.”

Kuzmo is holding the phone to my ear. I’m not allowed to touch it, even under the scrutiny of all these men.

“Are you well, brother?” Dom says.

“Of course. And you?”

“Very well. Business runs smooth. The deposit will be sent as usual.”

“Good, thank you. I keep busy here, too. Reading in the morning. Then,” a short pause, “I spend evenings exercising so no opportunity wastes.”

“Good, brother. Keep it up,” Dom says.

Kuzmo pulls the phone away before I can say anything else.

No matter. I told Dominik what I needed to say.

Marko is watching me as always, meaty arms folded across his chest.

He was always a big man, and he’s grown softer with age—a layer of fat over what was once hard muscle. Still, he could break the back of any man here, save for one.

“Until next month, my friend,” Marko says.

“I look forward to it,” I reply.

Kuzmo unlocks the cuffs.

I return to my place on the bed, picking up my paperback once more.

Marko is the last to depart my cell, closing the door himself with an echoing clang.

The sound is dismal and cold.

But there’s a fire in my chest that had burned down to an ember, now stoked anew.

I managed to pass a message to Dom, with a piece of information that might be useful to Sloane in her search.

I do this every month, if I’ve observed anything about the prison or the guards that might help her to find me.

It’s a simple code, the first letter of each word forming its own sentence:

I

Spend

Evenings

Exercising

So

No

Opportunity

Wastes

* * *

24

Ares

Christmas morning I visit my mom.

I stop by the Solar first to leave my gift for Nix outside her door.

I couldn’t get her anything expensive, because after all, Ares is supposed to be poor, but I bribed one of the cooks to make her an entire basket of fresh, hot verhuny, the only food she’s complained of missing at Kingmakers. The little pastries—deep-fried, crispy, and sprinkled with powdered sugar—smell exactly like funnel cake, which makes me surprisingly nostalgic as well. I hadn’t realized I was missing American food.

I also commissioned a basket of blueberry muffins for Hedeon, as penance for making him intervene in my fight with Estas.

I leave the muffins by his door, knowing an apology is less welcome if somebody wakes you up to offer it.

My mom gets a different sort of gift—a photo Freya sent in her last letter, found in the drawer of our father’s study in our house in Cannon Beach.

I’ve returned to that house several times during the summers when I’m not at Kingmakers.

It gives me no comfort, no sense of being at home.

The house is too cold and too quiet. My father’s absence an echoing emptiness that no light or sound can fill.

I never knew I could miss someone like I miss my dad.

I never knew how much I relied on him.

He was always there to tell me what I should do. Giving me a sense of security even in a world as chaotic and violent as ours. I always knew he’d keep us safe.

And he did—the night the Malina attacked us, he offered up his own life so we could escape, providing cover while we fled on the boat.

But he didn’t die. The Malina shot him, captured him, and dragged him off to a cell in some desolate place, in some unknown country.

We’ve been searching for him ever since.

We know he’s alive because Marko Moroz has been using my father to extort us for every penny the Petrov empire earns.

We siphon off as much cash as we can without the rest of the Bratva noticing. It’s our money, but if the high table knows that Ivan Petrov is missing, that he’s no longer in control of his territory, they’ll descend on St. Petersburg, and on our holdings in America, too.

Dominik has been running St. Petersburg, and Freya has been keeping the dispensaries going, even though she’s barely any older than Nix. She has the real Ares to help her, at least. During the summer months, my mother shores up the bulwarks. Come September, she returns to Kingmakers as Miss Robin so she can scour the archives for schematics not found anywhere else in the world.

We’ve seen where Marko holds my father. The first call was video—my mother insisted upon it to confirm that my father was still alive, refusing to pay a single penny without seeing him in the flesh. Her real purpose was, of course, to gather information.

Marko only showed us the interior of the cell. Even that provided several clues to where my father might be found. The type of stone that formed the walls, the shape of the doorways, the angle of the light . . . all have been studied to the minutest degree when my mother combs over the recording.

And my father himself has been giving us information, disguised by a simple code that, to our knowledge, Marko has never noticed during the monthly calls to Dominik where proof of life is exchanged for another ransom payment. Once a month my father tells us what he’s observed, and slowly, painstakingly, we narrow our options, cutting closer and closer to the source.

It was a coded message from two months ago that gave my mother the idea of a mine.

My father had observed a fleck of yellow powder on one of the soldier’s boots.

We’ve tried following Marko and his men. As far as we can tell, only Marko and his lieutenant Kuzmo visit the place where my father is held. The rest of the guards must stay there permanently.

Tracking Marko is no easy task. He leaves from his compound deep in the mountains outside of Kyiv. He flies on his private jet, which is regularly combed for explosives and tracking devices. He’s paranoid and reclusive, the growing list of enemies who would want to see him dead causing him to ramp up his security measures by the month.

The only places he goes regularly now are the Four Seasons in Kyiv to meet with his accountant, and wherever the fuck he’s got my dad.

Even tracking him to the Four Seasons is dangerous. He saw Adrik’s SUV following him once, and he called Dominik, bellowing into the phone, “If you ever fucking try to track me again, I’ll cut off Ivan’s arm and mail it to you in a box. You take one step toward me, you even think of raising a hand against me, and I’ll chuck an incendiary grenade into his cell. Your only hope of getting him back alive is to pay me my fucking money and bide your time.”

None of us believe that Marko will ever release him.

He told us five years—that was my father’s punishment for his betrayal the night Marko sought his revenge on Taras Holodryga. Five years in a cell, and payments every month.

The closer we get to that five-year mark, the more certain my mother becomes that Marko intends to kill my father, keep the money, and pour out his endless lust for revenge on the rest of us.

So that was Plan A: find my father, break into wherever he’s being held, and bring him home. Knowing that if Marko even caught a hint of what we were trying to do, he would slaughter my dad immediately.

Plan B is Nix.

We knew she’d be vulnerable at Kingmakers—out of her father’s tight circle of protection.

You can’t attack Kingmakers to kidnap a student. But if you’re already inside . . .

We planned to take her and trade her life for my father’s.

The only reason my mother hasn’t done it already is because it’s risky—Marko is volatile, irrational. A simple trade might not go as planned. And my mother believes we’re closer than we’ve ever been to finding my father.

I cross the deserted castle grounds.

It’s too early in the morning for anyone else to be stirring, after the night of extended revelry at the Christmas dance.

My mom will be awake. She doesn’t sleep much anymore.

I crack the heavy library door, entering the cool, dark space.

I know she’ll hear me coming in. She’ll hear me walking up the ramp, even with the thick carpet underfoot.

Sure enough, she’s waiting for me halfway up the ramp, perched on the edge of the desk, a simple black robe wrapped around her slim frame.

She looks more like herself than I’ve seen in a long time. This is how she dressed normally: in simple, dark clothing. Moving as smoothly as a shadow come to life.

I can just see the tiniest hint of her natural dark brown color coming in at the roots of her red hair. Time for another application. She dyes her hair in the sink of her small apartment at the very top of the Library Tower.

She’s not wearing the false glasses. Unencumbered and unshielded, her dark eyes glitter with the full force of their intensity.

“How was the dance,” she says.

I hesitate, wondering if she knows I got in a fight.

I didn’t see her at the party, though that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there. She hears all the gossip that passes between students in the library, allowing her to know more of what goes on at the school than the Chancellor himself.

No students today, though. So no gossip.

As blandly as possible I say, “It was good.”

Then, to distract her further, I thrust my gift into her hands.

My mother unwraps it, smiling slightly.

“I was hoping for a new Ruger, but it doesn’t feel heavy enough . . .” she teases me.

When she sees the framed photograph, her face goes still.

It’s a picture of my father and her, dancing at a wedding—I don’t know whose.

My father is spinning her around, her hand up-stretched and his arm the axis. My mother’s head is thrown back. She’s laughing, her skirt flared around her legs like a bloom around the stem of a flower. My father is staring at her like he’s never seen anything more captivating. He’s grinning like the luckiest man in the world.

“Freya said he kept it in his desk, face-up in the top drawer, so he’d see it whenever he—”

“Yes,” my mother says softly. “I remember.”

She can’t take her eyes off my father’s face.

I know she has pictures of him hidden upstairs. But she’s looking at this one like she’s seeing my father in the flesh, standing before her now.

“There’s no one else for me, and there never could be,” she says quietly.

“I know, Mom.”

She looks up, startled, like she forgot I was there.

“Thank you,” she says. “I’ll keep this safe for him. It’s his favorite.”

My stomach twists. Maybe Freya should have left the picture in the desk. Taking something out of my father’s office feels like a bad omen—like we don’t think he’ll return.

Reading my face, my mother says, “Don’t worry—I have good news for you.”

I swallow hard. “You do?”

“Yes,” she breathes, her excitement barely contained in the slight tremor of her shoulders. “I think I found him.”

“How?” I say.

“I had it narrowed down to six —”

“I remember,” I say, mentally running through the maps she showed me in the archive.

“When he spoke to Dominik last week, he said he saw snow. It only snowed in one place out of the six that day.”

Grabbing my arm, she pulls me toward her desk, shoving aside a pile of unsourced books and unfurling a long, crumbling scroll.

“Look!” she points to the blueprint, to the spider-fine script in the corner bearing the name.

Irkolasan Uranium Mine, it says.

The powder on the soldier’s boot—yellowcake. Uranium concentrate.

I have to lick my lips before I can speak.

“Where is it?” I murmur.

“Kazakhstan.”

My heart is thudding hard against my chest. I can hardly believe it’s true. After all this time . . . we could actually go to him.

“What do we do now?” I say.

“We scout the location and plan our attack,” my mother says. “We have to be meticulous. If we make a single mistake, if they know what we’re doing . . .”

She doesn’t have to finish that sentence. We have to break in unheard and unseen—or the first shot fired will be directly into my father’s skull.

I let out a shaky breath.

“We won’t need Nix, then,” I say.

My mother turns to look at me, her gaze sharp and unyielding.

“Nix is coming with us,” she says. “As insurance.”

Now my heart drops down to my toes.

What my mother means is, if Marko Moroz puts a bullet in my father’s head, she’ll do the same to his daughter.

* * *

I returnto the Octagon Tower, the full weight of reality crashing down on my shoulders.

We got what we wanted: we finally found the map.

But that seems so unreal that I can’t really enjoy it.

The thing that seems intensely clear and present is the fact that Nix is about to find out that I lied to her—when I rip her out of her bed and fucking kidnap her.

It may be a week or it may be a month until it happens, but she’s going to know that I’ve been manipulating her. That everything I did was for the purpose of destroying the one person she loves.

My chest is so tight that I can hardly draw a breath.

I almost run into Hedeon in the common room on the fourth floor.

“Hey,” he grunts, his face unshaven and his stubble dark against his skin. “Did you make muffins for me?”

“I didn’t make them,” I say. “But I dropped them off. Felt bad about dragging you into that thing with Estas last night.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Hedeon shrugs.

I notice that he’s still wearing his rumpled dress shirt and trousers, like he hasn’t gone to bed yet.

“Did you sleep in here?” I say, nodding toward the battered sofa.

“Didn’t sleep at all,” Hedeon says.

The dark shadows under his eyes confirm it.

“What’s wrong,” I say, “Didn’t get enough dances with Cara?”

“Cara is perfection,” Hedeon says quietly. “Way too fucking good for me.”

He doesn’t say it like he’s trying to be convinced otherwise—he’s just stating a simple truth.

“I think she likes you,” I tell him.

Hedeon ignores this.

“Did you see Sabrina Gallo dancing with Ilsa Markov?” he says.

“Yeah.” I nod, my cock trying to stir at the memory of Nix sandwiched between the two girls, Ilsa Markov cupping her breasts from behind while she took Sabrina’s face in her hands and kissed her . . .

“Pretty hard to miss it,” I say.

Hedeon nods. “Everyone was watching. Including the Chancellor.”

My stomach does a long, slow flip.

“Well,” I say, with a fake chuckle. “He’s only human.”

“He was talking to Sabrina after the Quartum Bellum,” Hedeon says. “And he let her off easy the first day of school, after she clocked Estas.”

“He didn’t punish Nix, either,” I say, trying to hide my pounding pulse.

“I think he’s got a thing for her,” Hedeon insists.

I take three slow breaths, my brain racing behind my dull expression.

“So what if he does?”

“I think he has a type,” Hedeon says. “He likes them young. Dark-haired. And wild. Just like my mother.”

The silence stretches between us, Hedeon’s angry stare drilling into me, with all the heat of his long-suppressed rage.

“If he’s your father . . .” I say, “Then what are you going to do?”

With calm surety, Hedeon replies, “I’m going to kill him.”

* * *